LifeinAsia - 4:02 pm on May 25, 2010 (gmt 0)

Another issue- from a formatting standpoint, an avatar would take up a lot of real estate.

what if they were optional? If you upload a picture and enable it, then you see everyone elses?

It sounds like a possible compromise, if there were a lot of people who wanted them. The "no" side seems pretty vocal, so no matter what, some way to turn them off would definitely be required.